


fragile tiny shells, drifting in the foam

by toastweasel



Series: Harmony [3]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Cloudkids, Detox, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, References to Addiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:34:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27438163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toastweasel/pseuds/toastweasel
Summary: They've known her 50 years. They didn't know she was an alcoholic.The Cloudkids cope with a sudden revelation about Lin Beifong. Some take it harder than others.[CW Alcoholism and its effects on others, detoxing from alcohol, etc. Companion fanfic for "brave soldier girl, comes marching home." Spoilers for Chapters 10 and 11.]
Relationships: Lin Beifong & Bumi II, Lin Beifong & Kya II, Lin Beifong & Tenzin, Linzin (past)
Series: Harmony [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1930441
Comments: 39
Kudos: 123





	fragile tiny shells, drifting in the foam

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write this fic as soon as I wrote chapters 10 & 11\. I hope it clears some things up, and provides a little outer-spective on what Lin is going through, and how it is affecting those around her. Alcoholism doesn't just affect the alcoholic; it affects everyone around them.
> 
> Thank you so much to Linguini for your amazing beta skills, silly comments, and most of all for keeping disaster tenses in line. I would be--will be--shall be--lost without you! ;)

“Master Kya, the Assistant to the Chief of Police is on the phone.”

Bumi pops his head over the top of Oogi’s saddle. “Hui?”

“For me?” Kya asks quizzically as she turns around, holding their bags off the back of Oogi.

“Are you too busy for the call?” the acolyte asks.

“No, I’ll take it,” she says, setting the bags down and brushing down her dress. “Will it take long?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Be right back,” she tosses over her shoulder to her brothers, then follows the acolyte inside. “What’s this about, Bia?”

“She didn’t say,” Bia responds apologetically, taking her into the phone room and gesturing at the device.

Kya frowns and picks it up. “This is Kya.”

_ “Master Kya, this is Hui, from the Republic City Police Department,” _ says the voice of Lin’s assistant. “ _ Do you remember me?” _

“Hui, of course I remember you, it’s good to hear from you,” Kya says cheerfully, leaning on the phone desk. “How are you?”

_ I’m…”  _ Hui hesitates on the end of the line, which from Kya’s limited experience is unlike her.  _ “I’m well, Master Kya, thank you. But we need a healer.” _

“At the station?”

_ “No at…Chief Beifong’s apartment.” _

Kya inhales sharply at the implications. Lin’s apartment? Was she injured? “Is she hurt?”

_ “I can’t say more over the phone,”  _ Hui says apologetically. _ “Are you available?” _

Kya glances out the door at her brothers unloading Oogi. “I can be? If it’s urgent she should be taken to Yue General.”

_ “It’s not urgent, but it is time sensitive.” _

What the hell could that mean? She nibbles on her bottom lip; she hasn’t slept well, what with their pell-mell race back to the city from the south, and is in desperate need of a bath. But if Lin is in trouble, and needs a healer, of course she will go.

“I’ll collect my bag,” she tells Hui. “I can be there in thirty minutes.”

_ “Thank you, Master Kya. I’ll meet you in the lobby.” _

She hangs up the phone and hurries out to the courtyard, where her brothers are standing about on the ground.

“What’s up?” Bumi asks.

“I need my healer bag,” she says instead, and Bumi looks around until he finds it. He tosses it down to her and she catches it in both arms with an  _ oomph _ .

Tenzin’s eyebrows almost meet in the middle with the depth of his frown. “What’s going on?”

“I’m not quite sure,” she admits, already turning to leave. “I have to go into the city.”

“Are you going to be back for dinner?” Tenzin calls after her.

She shrugs and simply shouts back, “I’ll call you if I’m going to miss.”

She hurries from the courtyard to the water, boots scuffing against the gravel on the ground, and doesn’t stop to wait for the ferry. Instead, she bends an ice raft off the end of the dock and jumps onto it, propelling herself across the bay in record time.

The city had looked a mess from the air, but it’s even harder to navigate from the ground. There are vines everywhere, whole forests having sprouted suddenly in the middle of the street. The cable cars aren’t running, and the streets are clogged with Satomobiles.

She ends up walking from the docks to Lin’s apartment. Even as quickly as she can go, it’s almost an hour before she gets there. Her mind is racing the entire time; she doesn’t know the specifics of the battle they had missed here, just that it had been epic.

Hundreds of people are clearly going to be displaced. Entire blocks have been swollen with vines, destroyed by Spirit blasts and fallen airships. She thinks of all the injuries that could cause. Burns, obviously. Severed limbs. Broken bones, internal and external injuries, impalement.

It will all depend on how Lin has been hurt. Was it during the fight itself or during the recovery effort? Recovery effort could be anything--sprained ankles, pulled muscles, back problems, hip spasms... 

Or worse, what if it isn’t Lin at all? 

What if it’s one of her people, and Lin’s apartment had just been the closest place to hole up?

Lin would have hated that, letting strangers into her most sacred of spaces, but she would have done anything for her officers, and Kya knows that.

By the time Kya reaches the lobby of Lin’s apartment, she’s sweaty and slightly disheveled, but the doorman lets her in anyway like he’s been expecting her. Hui is waiting in the lobby just like she promised.

“Master Kya,” she says gratefully, striding up as soon as she sees her, “thank you for coming.”

“Of course,” Kya says, giving the firebender a quick up and down look. There’s nothing obviously wrong with her, but her aura is all mixed up and muddy. She’s clearly stressed, but then again, most people’s auras are a mess right now.

She gets to the task at hand. “Hui, what’s going on?”

“Please come upstairs,” Hui says tightly, gesturing towards the elevator bank.

“Is it Lin or someone else?” Kya asks as they walk.

Hui shakes her head.

Kya tries again as they step into the waiting elevator. “What is their condition?”

“Mobile, alert, and pissed off.”

“So it  _ is  _ Lin.”

Hui glances at her with an apologetic expression, and settles into parade rest as the elevator operator takes them to the sixth floor.

Kya sighs in exasperation. “You have to give me something.”

“You’ll see soon enough.”

The firebender is doing the thing assistants do where they are formal to the point of distraction, and Kya can’t tell if it is intentional or not. Hui doesn’t seem the type, but she has also been on the receiving end of Hui’s abilities of misdirection once before, so she knows Hui is capable of it.

This doesn’t seem like that, though. Hui  _ is  _ being intentionally obtuse, but not to stop her.

No, it’s almost like she’s trying to keep a secret.

The elevator dings open, and Hui steps out. Kya follows her down the hall to an apartment door, which Hui knocks on sharply before pushing open.

“Master Kya,” Hui says, and gestures towards her boss. “Your patient.”

Lin is seated on the apartment's only sofa, looking ragged. Her hair is unkempt, like she didn’t brush it, and her undershirt is stained. There’s something wrong with her eyes, too--her pupils keep blowing in and out, like she’s having trouble focusing. There’s a bottle of baijiu on the table, next to a pai-sho board with a half-played game. 

Saikhan, Lin’s second in command, is nearby. He looks exhausted and unkempt, too, but less of a I-slept-in-my-uniform bedragglement and more of a got-too-little-sleep-and-got-dressed-in-a-rush way.

Kya feels that. 

She looks around for other signs, other clues, but besides Lin and Saikhan, the room is empty. Lin is definitely in the roughest shape--she has to be why she’s here.

A rebellious patient on top of less than three hours of sleep and a pell-mell flight back to Republic City. Kya’s lucky day. 

She moves deeper into the apartment, closer to Lin, and Lin scowls at her. 

“What the hell are you doing here?”

The healer restrains a sigh. “Treating you, apparently.”

“I thought you were in Harbor City dealing with Harmonic Convergence?” she asks, sounding almost accusatory.

“We just got back,” Kya says tiredly. “Literally. We were unloading Oogi when an acolyte came out with the phone.”

She watches as Lin glares at Hui, who has the decency to at least look somewhat apologetic.

“Master Katara said she has too many people in her hut to take you,” Hui explains, “but she said that Master Kya was on her way to Republic City.”

That was news to Kya. Hui hadn’t said anything about her mother when she’d spoken to her on the phone. 

“You called Mom before you called me?” Kya frowns and looks between Lin, her assistant, and Lin’s assistant chief. There issomething she was missing; something big. “What’s going on?”

Saikhan and Hui share a cautious glance, and Lin scowls.

“Oh, now you’re hesitant to tell people,” Lin spits bitterly. “Sit down, Kya.”

“We’ll leave you two alone,” Saikhan says hurriedly, and he and Hui slide past Kya and out the front door.

It closes with a firm snap, leaving the two of them alone.

Kya frowns as she moves in closer. Lin is her patient, clearly, but it doesn’t look like there is anything wrong with her besides a bit of dishevelment. There’s no obvious blood or broken bones; she knows Lin has a bad hip, she heard about the time she broke it through Tenzin, but Lin isn’t sitting like it is paining her.

Sure, Lin looks angry, but that’s basically her resting state.

Kya is incredibly confused. She reaches out for Lin’s aura and finds it to be a deep, deep blood red. It’s redder than she’s ever seen, and she’d seen Lin after her sister had whipped her across the face with her own cable.

Lin had been so upset then, torn apart with anger and guilt, but her usual mustard-yellow aura had only been mixed with red, not the almost maroon it is now.

Her ailment might not be physical, but something is clearly very, very wrong with her.

Kya settles on the couch beside her old friend. “Were you hurt in the spirit attack?”

Lin shakes her head, not meeting her gaze.

“Were you hurt in the cleanup?”

Lin shakes her head again, and Kya sees her hands tighten until her knuckles are almost white.

Kya frowns. “Then why am I here?”

Lin takes a deep breath, lets out a shuddering sigh, and when she finally meets her gaze, her she’s wavering unsteadily, like she’s drunk.

“Because I’m an alcoholic, Kya,” she says, and her voice sounds broken, “and I need to detox.”

“You’re—” Surely she heard her wrong. “What?”

“Don’t make me say it again.”

Kya’s mind races. Lin? An alcoholic? There’s no way. She hasn’t seen Lin drinking, even, not since they were young.

Oh.

She hasn’t seen Lin drinking.

She hasn’t seen Lin  _ drinking anything. _

Not at Izumi’s coronation, not at Uncle Sokka’s funeral, not at the celebration of her father’s life.

Not when Lin’s mother had disappeared off the face of the earth.

Not when she’d broken up with Tenzin. Not when Su had announced the birth of her first child and Kya had dropped in to check on her.

Not when Tenzin had announced the birth of his first daughter and Kya had bumped into Lin at the market. She remembers her surprise that Lin hadn’t had any alcohol in her grocery basket.

Maybe there had been a reason for that. 

Had she been sober? But that didn’t make sense. She and Lin had drinks in the South Pole. Lin had drunk almost a third of a bottle of soju.

Kya frowns.

Lin had…

_ Oh _ .

Oh, Spirits.

Kya swallows, looks at Lin, and sees the pain in her eyes. Something has happened, something bad, and it’s caused Hui and Saikhan to get involved.

That explains the secrecy. That explains Hui’s misdirection. That explains Lin’s unsteady gaze, and the half-drunk bottle of baijiu on the coffee table.

Lin probably wants nothing more than to die on the spot.

“For how long?” Kya finally asks.

Lin swallows. “Eighteen years.”

Eighteen years.

Well that explains a whole lot, now doesn’t it?

.

.

.

Almost half an hour later, Kya carefully closes the door to Lin’s apartment behind her and turns to Saikhan and Hui, who were waiting a few feet down the hall.

“I’m assuming the both of you know what that was about?” she asks, and they nod in unison. “Good. She’s packing a bag and will be coming with me.”

“How long will she be in treatment?” Saikhan asks immediately. “A week like last time?”

Kya gives a small shrug. Her mom might have put Lin through detox, but she doesn’t know anything about it. “I can’t say. Most detoxes take a week, maybe two.”

Hui nods, looking grim. “I’ll prepare for two.” She looks at Saikhan. “What should we tell the press? They’ll notice she’s gone.”

Saikhan shrugs helplessly. “Back injury?”

Lin’s assistant grimaces and doesn’t look thrilled at the lie, but Kya can’t focus on that right now. She has to call her brother and she’s not sure Lin won’t disappear if she leaves her to go downstairs and use the phone. “Are you two staying? I need to call Tenzin.”

Saikhan nods and glances back at the door. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t cut and run.”

Kya gives him a grateful smile and goes downstairs. She finds the phone booth, navigates through the operator, listening to the phone ring on the other side.

_ “Councilman Tenzin’s office,”  _ her brother’s voice finally says, _ “this is he.” _

“Hey Tenzin, it’s me,” Kya says with a sigh, leaning against the phone booth. The weight of what is happening is finally catching up with her; Lin is an alcoholic. Lin needs to detox. Lin needs her to be the one to treat her. She’ll be treating her in her mom’s old healing hut. Fuck.

“Kya! What’s going on?” he asks immediately. “Is it Lin? How is she?”

She hesitates. She’s not surprised Tenzin went snooping, probably interrogated Bia and made his own inferences based on what he had heard. Still, she understands Hui’s secrecy earlier. “Look—I need to use mom’s old hut on the island. Can you have some acolytes go in and put new sheets on the beds and give everything a quick dusting?”

“It’s that bad?” her brother asks, and she can hear the panic edging into his voice. “Can she walk? Should I bring Oogi?”

“She’s mobile,” Kya assured him.  _ I think _ . “It’s…complicated, okay?”

“…How complicated?”

Kya glances in at the waiting room, aware of all the people coming and going, the fact that life is going on despite the massive upheaval in the city overnight. She can’t know who around her has ears too big for their heads. Lin is a private person by nature, but if something like this got out, it could be ruinous.

“I can’t tell you right now,” she finally tells her brother, voice uncharacteristically tight. “Her life isn’t in any danger, but it’s gonna be a long few days, okay? Can you keep people away from the hut? She won’t…she won’t want anyone to see her arrive.”

“Kya,  _ what  _ is going on?”

“I can’t tell you right now,” she says a little desperately, and her voice cracks from the emotion. Fuck. “I just—let me get her in, get her settled? Bring Bum by after evening meditation, okay? I’ll tell you both everything then. I promise.”

Tenzin is quiet on the other end of the line for a long moment. “Alright. Fine. But I want to know everything.”

“Everything,” Kya promises, then hangs up the phone.

-/-

She lets her two brothers into the hut after getting Lin settled for the night with something to put her under. She has a feeling Lin won’t be resting much for the next two weeks, if her mother’s recollections of Lin’s first detox and Kya experience helping others is any indication.

“She’s asleep,” Kya says quietly, and nods her head exhaustedly towards the healer’s quarters.

Both Bumi and Tenzin glance at the closed screen doors to the middle exam room, then follow Kya past the gleaming healing bath and into the room where Kya has a feeling she’ll be spending a significant amount of time.

“Kya,  _ what _ is going on?” Tenzin asks as soon as the door is closed. “What’s wrong with Lin? Why is she here? And why are you being so secretive about it?”

Kya sighs and drops with a heavy plop into the chair by the desk. Bumi and Tenzin exchange worried glances and sit on the bed that isn’t covered with Kya’s things.

She’s already exhausted, and knows as the only healer on duty, it’s going to be a long week, if not more, of extensive treatment.

“Lin’s here to detox,” she finally tells them. “She’s an alcoholic.”

Bumi’s eyebrows climb nearly to his hairline as Tenzin exclaims, “WHAT?”

Kya winces and glances nervously at the door.

“Will you be quiet?” she hisses at her baby brother. “The whole point was that the entire island  _ doesn’t _ know she’s here.”

“An alcoholic?” Tenzin asks, quieter this time, his grey eyes still wild and indignant. “Lin? Don’t be absurd.”

Kya gives a helpless little shrug and runs a hand over her hair. She’s never felt as old as she does in this moment, watching her brothers come to terms with her revelation.

Bumi crosses one leg over the other, leans a cheek on one fist, and looks pensive. He’s quiet and serious-faced, and strokes his beard with his free hand. Kya recognizes the set of his brow as his thinking face.

“That would explain some things,” he finally says, voice grave.

Funny, that’s exactly what Kya had thought.

“What are you  _ talking _ about?” Tenzin asks desperately.

“I haven’t seen Lin with a drink in…” Bumi starts to count on his fingers, then clearly gives up. “A long time.”

“When have you seen Lin at all?”

“Before the Amon thing?” Bumi asks helplessly. “Uncle Sokka’s funeral? Maybe?”

Kya thinks back on her own memories of Uncle Sokka’s funeral. It had been a fucking disaster, all things considered, the entire family raw with emotion but also trying desperately to hide the pain from the newly-discovered Avatar in their midst. Korra hadn’t understood why all of her favorite adults were suddenly upset, but she had happily let her father take her out on his boat and left the family to mourn in peace without the interference of the gregarious and overexcited six-year-old.

Lin had been in and out—long enough to pay her respects and spend some time with Katara, then was back out on the next ship. Kya had been too busy helping her mother plan the second state funeral in six years to pay Lin much attention; now she wonders if she should have.

“Come to think of it, I don’t think I saw her drinkin’ at the wake,” Bumi says, and tugs on his beard in thought. “Or at Dad’s ceremony.”

“She was sober then,” Kya supplies dully. She has run the timeline through in her head. If Lin had been sober for eighteen years, the earthbender would have gone through detox three years before their father died. “When Uncle Sokka died she would have been sober for almost a decade.”

Bumi nods solemnly, crossing his arms over his chest.

Tenzin shakes his head. “Should you even be telling us this?”

“She gave me permission.” Kya sinks further into her chair and tiredly runs a hand over her forehead. Her skin is greasy; she hasn’t showered in two days. “You…you know Lin.”

They sit in silence. All of them  _ do  _ know Lin, know how tight the armor is pulled. Kya notices Tenzin is fidgeting, like he does when he has something on his mind. Like he has done ever since he was a little kid. Kya sees Bumi glance at Tenzin, and knows he sees it, too.

“What happened?” Bumi finally asks, when Tenzin stays quiet. “What caused her to break?”

“To relapse you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“She said it was Amon.”

Tenzin goes as white as a sheet. “Amon?”

“Losing her bending was just too much to bear,” Kya says softly. She licks at her bottom lip, and slumps forward, clasping her hands between her knees. “She was already drinking again by the time she came South to see Mom.”

“I had no idea,” Tenzin said quietly. “When I found her—she—”

That niggles something in Kya’s brain, something Lin had said earlier that morning. “When you found her?”

Tenzin looks over at her helplessly. “I didn’t—I didn’t know. We searched for her for—for weeks, it felt like. Days. Nobody knew where she had gone, she had just vanished off the face of the earth. And then we finally found her, right under our noses she was…”

He stops, his eyes drop, and he looks grim.

“Ten,” Kya prompts quietly, “what happened?”

He shakes his head as if to dispel the image in his head. “Her apartment was filled with baijiu bottles. She was passed out on the couch, drunk. Like when she was—”

He stops and looks horrified.

Kya knows where this was going. She can tell Bumi does too; she knows he’s done the math. He’s that kind of person.

Tenzin turns to face her with a panicked look in his grey eyes. “How long did you say she had been sober for?”

“Eighteen years.”

“Spirits,” he breathes, and she watches as a part of him breaks. 

Kya immediately shifts out of her chair onto the bed next to him. “You didn’t know?”

“No—I—” Her younger brother looks around the room wildly, between her and Bumi, like he’s desperate for them to believe him “—we were already—by that time, I was busy with the council, with Dad, with the temple—she was…” he trails off momentarily, eyes misty. “She had just been promoted. She was…busy with work.”

Tenzin closes his eyes and sighs, ruffling them all with a soft burst of air. Kya gives his hand an encouraging squeeze, wrapping an arm around him.

Bumi frowns from his side of the bed. “She detoxed while you were dating and didn’t even tell you?”

“It would...appear so.”

His tone is so defeated it alarms her. Kya and Bumi exchange glances over their brother’s bent head, then Bumi is there, too, wrapping his arms around Tenzin’s other side and pulling both of his younger siblings into a hug. Tenzin leans against them, and Kya can feel him starting to shake, like he’s crying.

“You really didn’t know?” Kya repeats, softly this time, just for clarification.

“I swear it.” His voice breaks in his answer, and Kya and Bumi exchange worried glances over his shoulder. 

“If Lin hadn’t wanted you to know, she would have kept it hidden,” Bumi says softly, his voice gravelly, hand squeezing gently at Tenzin’s arm.

Kya leans her head against her little brother’s shoulder and squeezes him tighter. “Bumi’s right. That’s just how she is.”

“I was her  _ boyfriend _ !”

“Were you though?” 

Tenzin shoots up and glares at Bumi, but Bumi shrugs, unrepentant. “That’s when you guys were fightin’ all the time, right?”

He hesitates, then shakes his head. “No we only really fought after Dad…” He pauses again, closes his eyes, sighs. “But I’d be wrong to say we weren’t drifting apart before then.”

“And you didn’t notice anything at all?”

“I said no!”

“Bum--”

“Lin always drank alcohol,” Tenzin continues angrily, helplessly. “When we went out, she’d always have a baijiu or a beer. It helped her take the edge off.”

“Well at some point it became more than just a nightcap.”

Tenzin nods, clearly lost in the past. “She was always so tense…”

“And you didn’t see her stop drinking?” Kya asks, more curious than anything else.

“We didn’t…those last few years we didn’t see much of each other,” Tenzin replies with a shake of his head. “Once a week if we were lucky. We were so busy, so focused on...the future.”

Kya swallows gently. Her poor baby brother. 

“When did it happen?” Tenzin wants to know. “When did she stop drinking?”

“I don’t know the specifics,” Kya says apologetically. “She wouldn’t tell me, and Mom’s memory is fuzzy. All I know is there was a fire downtown, she’d had a bit too much to drink…”

“She went to work drunk?”

The healer shrugs helplessly. “All I know is she detoxed on the Island, Ten. Mom and Dad helped her through it.”

“She did?”

She nods. “Yeah.”

She watches Tenzin grip his hands together tightly in his lap, knuckles going white from the pressure. Kya’s heart aches for him; to be blindsided by this almost twenty years later, with Lin asleep in the other room, their relationship just barely repaired.

They had been so close once. Best friends. Partners.

She can still remember Tenzin telling her about how he’d marry her one day.

She closes her eyes at the memory, leaving it in the past, and squeezes him again.

He shrugs her off and stands. “I’m going to make tea.”

“I’ll help,” Bumi offers, but Tenzin waves him off.

He clearly is at his limit, clearly needs to compose himself, and both Bumi and Kya know he’s always done best doing that alone.

“There’s a pot in the kitchenette,” Kya tells him gently. “Leaves in the cabinet. If you bring it to me I’ll boil it.”

He nods, then slips quietly from the room and closes the door behind them.

Kya watches him go, then sighs. “He’s taking it hard. Harder than I thought he would.”

“I would, too,” Bumi says, scooting back over and leaning back against the wall. “How would you react if you had just found out your ex-girlfriend was an alcoholic and had detoxed while you were dating? And your parents had helped her all without telling you? I’d be a fucking wreck.”

She tilts her head in acknowledgment. She was too far removed from Lin at the time—almost a full five years older, and had been away from Republic City for almost two decades when Lin had detoxed the first time. She hadn’t suspected a thing, still hadn’t known until she’d turned up at Lin’s apartment and Lin had told her, and she suspects Bumi feels similarly.

Still, Bumi is taking this far more easily than she had anticipated.

“You don’t seem surprised.”

Bumi shrugs. “Lots of people in the UF with drinking problems. This isn’t my first rodeo.”

“Did you know?”

“If she didn’t tell Tenzin, you really think she’d’ve told me?” Bumi asks, aghast. “Lin’n I were never that close.”

Kya sighs and leans forward on her knees, running one thumb over the other as she stares at the wall. Lin ison the other side of that wall, sleeping soundly in her healing suite bed—or so Kya hopes. She’ll have to check in on her after the boys left, make sure she is actually still there.

After this long ass day it’s  _ Kya _ that needs a drink, not that there is any to be found, not on this dry, dry island. She leans back and turns to her brother with a wry little grin. “Explains why Uncle Sokka’s stash went missing from the temple basement though.”

Bumi’s eyes widen, and then he chuckles. “I’d wondered about that.”

“You think he knew?”

Bumi hesitates, then he shakes his head. “Impossible to say. You think Mom told him?”

Now it is Kya’s turn to shake her head. “I don’t think she’d do that to Lin. And Mom said even she wasn’t supposed to know—she only got involved ‘cuz Lin started seizing. It was all Dad.”

Bumi is quiet for a long time. “…I didn’t realize Lin an’ Dad were that close.”

“I think we missed a lot of things, being away,” she muses, just as Tenzin comes back in with the tea tray. Kya quickly agitates the molecules inside the pot into steam, and they sit in silence as the tea steeps. Finally, Tenzin stands, pours the tea, and passes out the cups.

Kya sips hers—jasmine. Tenzin’s favorite.

“You okay?” Bumi asks him as he accepts his cup.

Tenzin sighs and sits down in Kya’s abandoned chair. “I will be. I just can’t believe she didn’t tell me.”

“You know Beifongs. Their pride will be the death of them.”

Tenzin gives a sad little smile and turns back to her sister. “How did it come that she reached out to you, Kya? When Bia said it was Hui calling, I thought Lin had been injured in the Dark Spirit attack.”

“Me too,” Kya admits, and runs her finger against the ceramic lip of the cup, absentmindedly bending the tea inside in a gentle circle. “Apparently Saikhan and Hui found her this morning passed out drunk in her office.”

Tenzin’s face gets, if possible, even more drawn.

Even Bumi looks worried now. “She drank at work?”

“Sounds like it,” she replies tiredly. She takes a sip of the tea, but it’s a bit bitter, because Tenzin has always been shit at making tea. He always oversteeps it. She sets the tea aside on the desk.

“I could only get bits and pieces out of Saikhan and Hui. They were in full damage control mode by the time I came back up to get her.”

Bumi sighs. “She must really be hurting then.”

“That’s why I need you two,” Kya admits. “Nobody can know she’s here.”

“She gonna have more seizures?”

“Seizures?” Tenzin asks, aghast, just as Kya admits, “It’s a possibility.”

“Kya called Mom,” Bumi explains, so Kya doesn’t have to. She shoots him a grateful look.

“I don’t even know if I should be treating her,” she finally confesses.

“Why not?” Bumi asks, one busy eyebrow raises dubiously.

“Because I…” She closes her eyes and cradles her head in her hand. Spirits, she was so stupid. “I gave her alcohol. When she was in the South Pole. She was distraught, I thought it was just about the bending—and maybe it was but I—”

To her mortification she can feel the tears coming. She had never wanted to hurt Lin. She never wanted to hurt anybody. That was the whole reason she became a healer in the first place.

Well, that and the fact she was the daughter of one of the greatest healers in the world.

It had practically been her destiny.

She swallows past the sudden lump in her throat, but can’t stop the tear that falls down her cheek and lands on the stone floor. She presses her lips together, shades her eyes from view, but can’t hide her trembling.

“Kya,” Tenzin murmurs, his voice soft. He pulls the chair over beside her and now it’s him holding her hands, wrapping an arm around her. “You couldn’t have known.”

“Exactly,” Bumi agrees, nudging her with his foot. “Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

She wrinkles her nose and swats at his foot, which only makes him poke harder.

“Cut it out, Bum,” she grumbles, glaring at him from under her bangs.

“Not until you smile.”

She bends the tea from the glass in his hand and lets it hover menacingly in front of him at eye level.

He swallows. “…How ‘bout a hug instead?”

“Better.”

He sets the cup aside and moves in, wrapping one strong arm around her shoulders. She leans fully into him, and he squeezes her hard. She sinks into the embrace and tries not to cry harder; Bumi always gives the best hugs.

“We’ve got you, Kya,” he says, and Tenzin nods in agreement from his chair. He’s still holding her hand, and she clutches it like a lifeline. “Whatever you need. Whatever she needs. We’ve got you.”

She sniffles, dries the tears from her face with the back of her hand, and gives them both a watery smile. Maybe, with both of them, she has a chance. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked what you read, please consider leaving a comment/review. :)


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